Trenchzone Boardgame
In salute of Veterans Day, which also marks the end of fighting in the Great War, Lisa and I played this two-player boardgame simulating trench warfare in WWI.
Each player deploys troops, artillery and pillboxes in three sectors. Cards played in each sector allow actions and movement of troops. Victory points are scored by destroying artillery positions or eliminating all enemy troops in one trench sector. However, a player automatically wins if their troops conquer their opponent's trench zone. Which is what Lisa did to me.
The Donkey mourning the loss of his Lions.
Lisa played a series of cards that destroyed the barbed wire in the left hand sector and charged troops ahead into my trench. Then it was down to die rolls, but she outnumbered me over 2:1.
View from Lisa's side.
Her 40-odd troops were whittled down to 15, but it was enough to win the game. This game has the potential of going on and on, with the Victory Point track shifting back and forth, just like WWI trench warfare, or it can be over quickly with a single push, as demonstrated above.
I am being transferred to another front where another battle will occur with fresh troops.
In his book The First World War, John Keegan described 1916 as "the year of battles." The great naval battle of Jutland took place as well as three major land offensives: Verdun, the Somme, and the Brusilov Offensive. By this time, the German Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn, who replaced Moltke after the failures of 1914, thought the Russians incapable of mounting a large scale offensive and shifted his focus to the West in an effort to weaken the French at Verdun. This contemptuous view of Russia was shared by the Allied commanders despite their own abortive attempts at a grand push against Germany. Russia was indeed beaten at Tannenburg, and their military was suffering from low morale and high desertion rates. Yet the Czar was committed to helping his French and British allies.
Italy's entry on the side of the Allies forced Austro-Hungarian commanders to shift soldiers away from the Russian front to bolster their southwest border. This allowed Russia to make one final strike against the Central Power forces. By 1916, the Russians now outnumbered their opponents in men and artillery shells. However, an attempted offensive in early 1916 was aborted due to poor coordination on the part of the Russians. Russian Chief of Staff Alexeyev insisted on another offensive and the new commander of the Southwestern Army Group, General Alexei Brusilov had an ambitious plan, one uncharacteristic of the more timid Russian commanders.
Picture shown taken from First World War website via Google search: http://www.firstworldwar.com/photos/graphics/nw_brusilov_01.jpg)
The map below shows the concept (left) and the results of the actual battle (right).
from Emerson Kent website: http://www.emersonkent.com/map_archive/eastern_front_may_1916.htm
Brusilov would forgo the predictable concentration of force and attack along a single approach since his movements could be seen and therefore countered. He ordered all his armies to dig trenches along the entire southwest front to confuse the Austrians. He also requested no reinforcements, committing his forces to an all-or-nothing battle. When the attack commenced on June 4, the Austrians were completely surprised. Brusilov's four Armies attacked simultaneously along a wide front. The greatest gains would be in the flanks due to the spirited actions in the Russian southwest with General Lechiysky's Ninth Army along the Carpathian Mountains (whose actions were the most successful) and the Russian Eighth Army under General Kaledin who took over for Brusilov. The progress of his two center Armies, the Eleventh under Sakharov and Shcherbachev's Seventh Army, was not quite as impressive but gained ground regardless. The Russians pushed the enemy back forty miles and Brusilov urged his commanders to press on. The Austrians were in full retreat, particularly to the Russian southwest. By the time the offensive ended in September, nearly 400,000 Austrians were taken prisoner and 600,000 were dead, wounded, or missing (Keegan: 304).
However, Brusilov had no reserves to follow up on his victory. His forces outran their supply lines. One continuous problem for the Russians during the war was the different rail gauges used by the Germans and Austrians. This meant that the Russians had to wait until the rails could be adjusted to receive more reinforcements and supplies. Brusilov also was relying on the other Group commanders, General Evert (West) and General Kuropatkin (North) to support his efforts with coordinated attacks. Evert, whose attacks earlier in 1916 failed, preferred a more defensive posture. Russian Chief of Staff Alexeyev tried to compromise too much with his Army Group Commanders and allowed Evert to postpone his attacks until June 20, much to Brusilov's frustration. Evert's efforts were immediately countered by the Germans. German Chief of Staff Falkenhayn was so alarmed at the scale of the Russian offensive he was compelled to pull forces from the West and their attacks against Verdun to stave off disaster in the East. The shifting of German forces stopped Brusilov from gaining further ground but cost Falkenhayn a victory at Verdun and his title as German Chief of Staff. As punishment he was transferred to the Romanian Front.
The Brusilov Offensive would be Russia's greatest victory, perhaps the greatest of the war up to that time. This battle convinced the stubbornly neutral Romania to fight along side the Allies. It also relieved French and British forces in the West who were suffering prohibitive losses against the Germans. Perhaps the most important was it all but knocked Austria-Hungary from the war. They were forced into a defensive posture until Germany essentially took over the Empire's handling of the war, an act which would cause resentment in the Dual Monarchy.
Brusilov's attack would be Russia's last, the nation's "last great gasp" as S.L.A. Marshall put it. Russian forces suffered over a million casualties and caused further discontent among the Russian peasant soldiers who had already suffered under the autocratic discipline of the Czar and the generals (Brusilov was known for his own brutal disciplinary methods). Did Brusilov know this would be an all-or-nothing attack which would result in horrific losses? Most definitely. Yet in hindsight, this was a brutal war that could not be won through timidity. The Brusilov Offensive would be the only battle of the First World War that would bear the name of its commander. For a moment, it dispelled the European myth of the incompetent Russian general. In some ways, the conduct of this offensive would be copied first by the Germans then the Allies in 1918: attacks along a wide front forcing the opposing armies to spread their defenses, setting the pattern for the conduct of battles in the next Great War twenty years later.
But events in Russia during 1917 would forever shadow the great and horrific battle that bears Brusilov's name. Within a year, the Russian Revolution deprived the Allies of their Eastern Front against Germany and would cause resentment against Russia when the Communists took power. Nevertheless, The Brusilov Offensive, in my opinion, was the beginning of the end for Imperial Germany.
Books used:
The First World War, John Keegan. Alfred A Knopf, New York, 1999.
The First World War: The War to End All Wars, Peter Simkins, Geoffrey Jukes, and Michael Hickey. Osprey Publishing, Oxford, 2003.
World War I, S.L.A. Marshall. Mariner Books, 2001 edition. Originally published 1964.
